
A Few English Garden Design Concepts
Our gardening friends in the UK have a reputation for design, and it’s well deserved. For a mid-winter treat, snag a copy of The English Garden magazine. Glossy pictures of amazing gardens abound, and you may find yourself a bit wistful. While we may not have many head gardeners or manor homes with garden estates in the US, nearly any size garden can have a few elements of that English Garden style.
While some English gardens are supremely formal, with topiaries, tall hedges, brick walls, and larger-than-life statues in fountains, most are a bit less intimidating. They embrace not only flowering plants but shrubs, trees, grasses, and structural elements, forming a more relaxed environment with something for all seasons.
To embrace the English Garden concept of flowing paths, garden rooms, lush full plantings, and a mix of formal and informal, start by tossing out the old garden rows. Except for kitchen gardens, you won’t find many straight rows of plants or flowers in the English garden (although you may see ruler-straight paths). Start by imagining sweeping curves, hedges, paths, and heavily planted beds.
Grab some colored pencils and paper, and let your imagination go. Don’t worry about it looking perfect on paper. Draw ovals and circles with the right colors, let them overlap, and you’ll soon start to get the idea. Start by adding sweeping paths for non-garden functions like taking out the trash or accessing the back of the garage. From there, imagine several spaces, each partially separate but brought together by the lawns, walkways, and arches.
Sketch the idea until you have it, then lay out a garden hose, an old cardboard box or two, and other items in the yard to help you visualize it and make adjustments before you break ground. Many excellent books exist to help you, and below are a few main points to consider when starting your English garden design.
Create Garden Rooms
A garden room isn’t a room like your dining room or den. Instead, it’s a section of the garden visually separated by a feature like a wall, fence, or even some tall plants. The division can be as formal as a manicured hedge or as informal as a block of tall sunflowers.
Not all of the space in a garden room has to be actual garden beds. The patio and eating area can be one room, a play area of lawn a second, and a quiet spot for resting or contemplation can be a third room. A few well-placed divisions can create two or more “rooms” in even a small yard. A simple arch or even a gap in the vegetation makes an easy transition point from one garden room to the next, with no need for a formal walk.
Garden rooms have different themes. One room could be a bit more wild, while the next is more formal. They can be differentiated by color palette, textures, function–a sitting area, an outdoor kitchen, a quiet contemplation area, or any other characteristic. For more fun, you can name them.
While a large, tall hedge takes some space and some time to become established, a single columnar evergreen like a sky pencil holly can anchor a dividing line consisting of a few shrubs or tall flowers. Garden rooms can also be separated by functional elements, like a fence that serves as a trellis for tomatoes or cucumbers or an arbor to hold up grapes or wisteria.
Embrace Cottage Garden Style
Cottage gardens appeal to us for the way they seem to blend and flow, looking lush and colorful but somehow giving the idea that it was all easy to do. The cottage garden, with its old time favorites like foxglove, delphiniums, sunflowers, larkspur, and snapdragons, is a good starting point when designing an English garden. But don’t be afraid to add more modern touches with zinnias, dahlias, petunias, and ornamental grasses.
The key is to achieve a full look with no bare spots. Cottage gardens are busy but not without order. Plant in groups or patches, but match those to the size of your garden—don’t try for 500-square-foot swatches of one flower in a small backyard. A patch 3-4 feet in size is normally enough to give the impression of lush color and bounty while leaving space for the next flower. A favorite flower can be repeated several times throughout the garden. Let the plantings be neighbors, running up against each other.
For the best effect, choose a few flowers for each season to avoid having the classically misguided all-summer-but-nothing-else garden. Mix plants with spring, summer, and autumn bloom times to provide color and interest as long as possible. Many plants even have interesting winter forms. Look to include some natives, especially in the grass and shrub categories. They’ll attract wildlife, and they’re adapted to your area and climate.
Develop a Naturalistic Layout
Blending with the landscape while retaining order is a key feature of the majestic English gardens, but that’s hard to do in a modern backyard. Remember, Nature doesn’t provide many straight lines. Left to its own devices, a wood edge won’t be ruler-straight. Patches of wildflowers don’t grow in rectangles in the meadow. Of course, we need a bit of order or it looks like utter chaos.
Sweeping borders and beds of mixed colors, sizes, and shapes are the starting point. Choose complementary colors and vary them throughout a bed. Remove sharp edges and straight lines, and let the border flow more. Bring a tall flower toward the path and let a shorter one peak out from farther back instead of rigidly ordering them from shortest to tallest. Mix it up.
Garden paths are a mainstay, both for enjoyment and, of course, for access to do the actual gardening. Unless you are in the formal garden room, where straight paths help to set the mood, the path should be winding. Let them meander, even if only for a few feet, curving around this flower or disappearing behind a bush. Add a bench under a tree, and you’ve just about got it.
Add Structured Elements
Many large English gardens found on manors and estates incorporate a huge amount of stonework, something out of reach for many of us unless you happen to be a Duke or Duchess with an old money fortune. But, despair not. Walls of cut limestone are not the only way to bring structure into our gardens.
Benches for sitting within the garden—and not merely up by the house—indicate that the garden is to be explored and is a spot for looking, resting, and thinking. A small statue or figurine or a stone birdbath can bring the look and texture of stone without breaking the bank. Existing privacy fences, playhouses, or firepits can all be worked into the design.
A sundial or other decorative element can also help set the mood. For an English garden vibe, choose materials that weather, like stone, wood, copper, and bronze. Their patina will soon blend with the garden, helping to start the imagination down the path.
Water elements are common features in English gardens but don’t have to be elaborate. A small kit pond and pump, a burbling fountain in front of a bench, or even a bird bath can bring the water element into the garden. Water also attracts songbirds and beneficial insects, which will help keep your garden in good health.
Bonus Points
Arbors serving as gateways from one garden room to another are a great start. Let some climbing vines swarm up the arch. While a blooming wisteria is classic and gorgeous, let your tastes and likes dictate the choices. Curved iron arches are timeless, but you can have fun creating DIY arbors and gates out of wood, tree branches, or even two tall, narrow shrubs. An arch covered in pole beans or cucumbers might be just the thing to serve as the portal to your veggie patch. Climbing nasturtiums will provide a tasty, edible flower and some bright color.
If your current gardening space is limited to a corner of the yard, patio, or even balcony, these same ideas can still apply with creativity. Large planters, preferably of terra cotta or other natural materials, are a mainstay of the typical English garden. Instead of one or two pots, gather several and set them at different heights. Create a visual screen with 2-3 foot tall plants in a large planter and they’ll be tall enough to provide a little privacy when you sit in your chair with a hot beverage.
Incorporating some characteristics from English gardens is fun, sets your garden apart, and provides a canvas to work with and refine over the years. As you design, ponder how to create a retreat, offering peace and privacy. Follow that idea, and you’ll be on your way.